From all the furniture items, the chair might be of most importance. While most of the other forms (save the bed) are created to support objects, the chair supports a human form. The term chair is intended to be used here in the largest sense, from stool to throne to developed forms such as a bench or sofa, which can be viewed as extended or connected chairs, and whose character (i.e., whether they are intended for sitting or reclining) is not overtly distinguished.
The social history of the chair is as interesting as its history as art and craft. The chair is not simply a physical support and an aesthetic artwork; it can also be a symbol of social place. Within the past royal courts there were clear connotations between having a chair with arms, sitting on a chair with a back but no arms, or worse having to cope with a stool. From the last century, the director’s and manager’s chair has developed an identifier of superior status, and even in democratic parliaments the speaker sits on a high-set level.
In a furniture form, the chair is utilised for a range of different makes. There are chairs designed to attend to man’s age and physical abilities (the high chair, the wheelchair) and to indicate his rank in society (the executive chair, the throne). In historical times there were chairs for births (birth chairs); in the 20th century, there have been chairs to die in (the electric chair). There are chairs with one, two, three, or four legs, chairs with or without arms, and chairs with or without backs. We can make chairs that can be folded for easy storage, chairs on wheels, and chairs on runners.
Our modern lifestyle has designated new chairs for use in automobiles and aircraft. Each of these chair types have been adapted to fit to changing human desires. Because of its unique association with man, the chair exists to its full purpose only when used. Though it is not relevant to one’s appreciation of a cupboard or a bureau whether there are things inside or not, a chair is really seen and judged by a person sitting in it, because chair and sitter complement one another. Thus the different limbs of a chair are named corresponding to the areas of a human parts: arms, legs, feet, back, and seat.
Because the elementary role of the chair is to support a human body, its worth is tested generally from how completely it does measure up to this practical job. Within the construction of the chair, the chair maker is bound within certain static regulation and principal measurements. Inside these limitations, however, the chair designer has marvellous freedom.
The history of the chair covers an era of several thousand years. There were peoples that created individual chair types, seen of the principal craft in the spheres of craft and design. Within such peoples, particular mention needs to be made of ancient Egypt and Greece; China; Spain and The Netherlands in the 17th century; England in the 18th century; and France in the 18th century during the ascendancy of Louis XV and Louis XVI.
Egypt
Two ancient Egyptian chair forms, both the result of skilled design, are now known from tomb discoveries. The first of these is a four-legged chair with a back, the other a folding stool. The original Egyptian chair would have had four legs formed as akin to those of some animal, a curved seat, leading to a sloping back supported from vertical stretchers. From this a durable triangular structure was made. There seems to be no noteworthy difference in the construction of Egyptian thrones and chairs for common non-royals. The only change existed in the level of ornamentation, in the evidence of more expensive inlays. The Egyptian folding stool likely was designed for an easily carried seat for army. As a camp stool this form stayed around during much later points in time. But the stool then was designed for the task of a ceremonial seat, its original history as a folding stool neglected or forgotten. This can from today be noted, from as early as 1366–57 BC in two stools, crafted in ebony with ivory inlay decoration and gold mounts, from the tomb of Tutankhamen. They were made in the construction of folding stools but aren’t able to be folded because the seats are made out of wood. The simplistic build of the folding stool, made of two frames that spin on metal bolts and hold a seat of leather or fabric set between them, was then seen but somewhat later during the Bronze Age folding chairs of Scandinavia and northern Germany. The better recognised of this form is the folding stool, made out of ashwood, which is now seen at Guldhøj (National Museum in Copenhagen).
Greece and Rome
The archetypal Greek chair, the klismos, is recognised not from any ancient item still in form but found in a trove of pictorial evidence. The better known is the klismos placed on the Hegeso Stele at the Dipylon burial ground just out of Athens (c. 410 BC). This klismos is a chair with a backward-sloping, curved backboard and four curving legs, only two of those would be displayed. These curving legs were understood to have been crafted in bent wood and were therefore had to bear a large amount of pressure with the weight of the sitter. The joints holding the legs to the frame of the seat would have been therefore very durable and were visibly denoted.
The Romans borrowed from the Greek style; a number of statues of seated Romans are evidence of a heavier and apparently kind of less intricately built klismos. Both styles, the light or the heavy, were popularised within the Classicist time. The klismos style is evidenced in French Empire styles, in English Regency, and in some forms of considerable uniqueness of Denmark and Sweden circa 1800.
China
The past of the chair in China isn’t able to be traced as far back as in Egypt and Greece. Since the time of the Tang dynasty (AD 618–907) an unbroken folio of sketches and works of art had been preserved, with images of the interior and exterior of Chinese homes and their furniture. Kept also since the 16th century are a trove of chairs made of wood or lacquered wood, that bear an interesting likeness to styles of ancient chairs.
As in Egypt, there were two fundamental chair designs in China: a chair having four legs and a folding stool. This four-legged chair was found both with or without arms though never missing the square seat and straight stiles (straight side supports) to hold up the back. In one type, however, the stiles were marginally curved on top of the arms so as to sit right with the form of the S-shaped back splat (the central upright of a chairback). All three sections are mortised onto the yoke-like top rail. Despite that the style of this back splat had a foundation for English chairs of the Queen Anne period, wooden pieces that only just to a particular capability support corner joints (and are loose additionally) indicate a feature signatory to Chinese chairs. The four legs pass through the seat frame, which stops around the rounded staves. Each member is round in section or possesses rounded edges—referable perchance to the bamboo tradition. The seat is unpleasant to sit in and occasionally had a plaited texture. These chairs required the sitter to remain stiff and upright; if too much weight is placed on the back, the chair has a tendency to topple. In patriarchal Chinese houses of this era armchairs probably were reserved for senior family members, for they were greatly respected.
The Chinese folding stool is thought to have travelled to China from the West. It does not differ that much from the Egyptian or Scandinavian folding stools, but it has a difference in that the top rail is intricately held to the two legs of the stool by using a curved member, which is generally provided with metal mounts. From a Western understanding the ultimate effect of both these furniture designs is stylized. The constructive and decorative parts are combined in a way that is at the same time naïve and refined. The piecemeal appearance is an upshot of the way that the individual items do not seem to have been affixed by either glue or screws, but had been mortised on one another and held in its place in the manner of a Chinese puzzle.
Spain: 17th century
The Golden Age of Spain in the 17th century also had its mark on the chair. Paintings display a style of chair with a relatively crude wooden frame; a back and seat, nailed on, consisting of two layers of leather, with horsehair stuffing between, stitched to bring out a pattern of small pads. The front board and a similar board in the back could be folded after loosening some little iron hooks. Therefore the chair was a readily portable piece of furniture for traveling which, during the same time, possessed the status of a four-legged, high-backed armchair.
The Netherlands: 17th century
A low, square, upholstered kind of chair is evidenced in engravings of the interiors of rich Dutch homes by Abraham Bosse, a French artist, and in paintings by the Dutch artists Johannes Vermeer and Gerard Terborch. While this type of chair is also found in countries where Dutch styles of interior decoration and Dutch furniture won preference, it is not certain that the innovation actually originated in The Netherlands. Generally, the legs of the chair were smooth, round in section, and of slim shape; they are in some cases baluster-shaped (vase-shaped) or twisted. It is unquestionably a bourgeois piece of furniture and was manufactured in considerable numbers, as surmisable from one of Abraham Bosse’s engravings, in which an entire row of these chairs lined up along a wall. The design asserts itself with its harmonious proportions and delicate upholstery in gilt leather or fabric framed with fringes.
France and England: 17th and 18th centuries
The French Rococo chair in its most mature form—that is, as brought out in Paris around 1750—disseminated over most of Europe and has been imitated or copied into the mid-20th century. The chair owes such popularity to a combination of relaxation and elegance. The seat adheres to the human body and permits a relaxed seated position. The back is bow-shaped, the legs curved. Typically the seat and back are upholstered, and there are small upholstered pads on the armrests. Smooth transitions are made between seat frame, legs, and back conceal all the joints, which are constructed solidly on craftsmanlike methods even with the absence of stretchers between the legs.
French Rococo chairs and imitations of them use wood of quite thick measurements; but each member is deeply molded, all extra wood has been sanded away, and more expensive chairs may be further embellished with highly delicate and decorative carvings. The wood can be varnished, stained, painted, or gilded. Silk damask or tapestry may be used for any upholstery on the seat, back, and armrests; canework is occasionally used as an alternative to upholstery.
English chairs of the 18th century were more variable in style than the French. The French preference for stylistic uniformity, which lead from the royal circles in Paris and Versailles throughout most of France and found favour in several parts of the Continent, had no parallel in England. Prior to 1740, the most commonly used wood was walnut; thereafter, and for the rest of the century, it was mahogany. Walnut, though beautiful in hue, was soft and therefore less suited to wood carving than to rounded, curving forms. Outer surfaces, such as the back and seat frame, were usually veneered. During the walnut period, highly overstuffed armchairs, covered with leather or embroidered material, were also developed. The best upholstery of this period is precisely and firmly modelled and accentuated by braiding or tacks. When imports of mahogany became common, no specifically new chair designs appeared, but the character of the woodwork changed. Mahogany, having a firmer, closer grain, could be cut thinner, which meant that individual parts of the chair could be more slender in shape. Mahogany also lent itself better to carving than walnut. Carving was concentrated more on the arms and back than on the legs, which as a rule were straight and smooth with chamfered (bevelled) edges and molding. There was a wealth of variety in chairback designs, featuring elegant, pierced, vase-shaped splats or two upright posts connected by horizontal slats (ladderback).
Alongside the French Rococo chair and the best English chairs in walnut and mahogany, the stick-back chair was relatively unaffected by the stylistic changes of the day. Originally a medieval form, known, for example, from paintings by Pieter Bruegel the Elder and still found in mid-20th century in the churches and inns of southern Europe, the stick-back chair (in all of its variations) consists basically of a solid, saddle-shaped seat into which the legs, back staves, and possibly the armrests are directly mortised. This typically peasant form underwent a renewal and a process of refinement in England and America during the 18th century. Under the name Windsor chair (a term that seems to have been used for the first time in 1731) or Philadelphia chair, it became reknowned and was widely distributed throughout the world.
Late 18th to 20th century
Within the Neoclassical period, no basic changes took place in chair forms, but legs became straight and dimensions lighter. Backs in the shape of classical vases replaced the fanciful outlines of the Rococo period. Around 1800, freely executed imitations of Greek and Roman chairs of the klismos type, with curved legs and backrest, appeared. French chairs of the Empire period, executed in dark mahogany and embellished with ornate bronze mounts, created a ponderous effect.
In cheaper versions of inferior workmanship, bourgeois chairs of the 19th century carried on the traditions of the 17th and 18th centuries. The only real innovations were the bentwood (wood that has been bent and shaped) chairs in beech that became popular all over the world and were still made in the 20th century. Around 1900 the continental Art Nouveau and Jugendstil styles (French and German styles characterized by organic foliate forms, sinuous lines, and non-geometric forms), and the Arts and Crafts movement in England (established by the English poet and decorator William Morris to reintroduce idealized standards of medieval craftsmanship), gave rise to original chair designs by Eugène Gaillard in France, Henry van de Velde in Belgium, Josef Hoffman in Austria, Antonio Gaudí in Spain, and Charles Rennie Mackintosh in Scotland. These new furniture styles did not exercise wide, let alone decisive, influence. The Art Nouveau chairs designed by the French architect Hector Guimard, for example, are collector’s pieces, but his name is known to a broader public only because of his fanciful entrances to the Paris Métro.
Modern
After World War I, the Bauhaus school in Germany became a creative centre for revolutionary thinking, resulting, for example, in tubular steel chairs designed by the architects Marcel Breuer, Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, and others. During World War II, the aircraft industry accelerated the development of laminated wood and molded plastic furniture. The dominant chair forms of this period go back to designs by Alvar Aalto, Bruno Mathsson, and Charles and Ray Eames. Rapid technical developments, in conjunction with an ever-increasing interest in human-factors engineering, or ergonomics, hint that completely new chair forms will probably be evolved in the future.
For a great deal on office furniture in Melbourne contact Fast Office Furniture today and check our specials.
Tangalooma Island Resort is an earthly paradise that can be found in Tangalooma, Queensland in Australia. It was originally a whaling station and was changed into an island resort because of its unique flora and fauna and its wonderful views. Couples or families looking for a great vacation destination will definitely enjoy a Tangalooma Island Resort holiday.
Hawaii is home to many beautiful vacation destinations and holiday bookings to these tropical islands can be made by Travel Online. This iconic tourist destination is well-known for its pristine beaches, moderate climate, world-standard shopping facilities, and distinctive Polynesian culture.